Quote Originally Posted by Howard Clark View Post
Not saying it didn't happen, mind you, but I find it hard to believe that anyone in the industry or academia involved in splitting atom nuclei would say that.

I even have a Tennessee "mountain william" friend who worked at Oak Ridge, and is as down home as it gets and he says it right too.
I'm looking for a citation for that. It's in one of these historical linguistics textbooks. I'm not surprised that your friend can say it "right" though; most people with a non-standard dialect do change their pronunciation once they get into certain fields. I'm not sure where the dividing line in the country is, but I'm fairly certain "nuclear" and "nucular" will be an isogloss (boundary between pronunciations) much like "greasy" and "greazy" with "nukular as the more southern/midwestern pronunciation. We all know that Bush uses it, but according to The American Heritage Book of English Usage, so did Eisenhower (born in Texas, raised in Kansas) and Carter (born in Georgia, and one of the first to be involved in the nuclear submarine program). (Source: http://www.bartleby.com/64/C007/0140.html)
Apparently Clinton says "nucular" as well, but I'm trying to find a more academic source for that. In any case, educated people certainly do pronounce it nucular.
I hope no one minds my long posts on this thread. It's just a subject close to my heart. Language is a rather personal thing, so I don't really expect to win many of you over But I like putting out what I know (on one of the few subects on which I know anything )